Why I needed a coach to become a career coach

Posted on December 09, 2020 by Shawna Gemmell, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

You would think that an HR professional with more than twenty years of experience would be able to figure out what she wanted to do next. I spent so many years helping others navigate their career moves; I should have known how to do this. And, HR to Career Coaching doesn’t seem like a rocket science decision. But when I embarked on figuring out my “what’s next” about three years ago, being a career coach was not even on my radar. I spent a very frustrating year knowing I was ready to do something new, but I had no idea what that new thing was! I didn’t know where to start.
I learned about career coaching from a few of my peers who told me how they had sought out coaching to help guide them through some career decisions, and it had helped. That’s when I got a career coach.

Career Coaching helped me:
-understand the values that were critical for me to have in my work;
learn how I could transfer the skills, knowledge, and abilities I already had into other jobs and industries;
-dig in and figure out what I loved to do most, and also what I was great at doing;
-set goals to gain skills and experience where I might be lacking;
-push past obstacles and reframe my perception of what I could or couldn’t do;
-and ultimately, make the best decisions for what I wanted in my career.

What I also learned from the coaching experience:
-Not every coach is the right fit. I had several conversations with different (all excellent) career coaches before I found the one that clicked. Here is an excellent article from HBR.org about finding the right coach for you.
-Not every coaching program is the right fit, either. There is 1:1 coaching, group coaching, coaching that focuses more on job search strategy, coaching that focuses on career development, etc. Make sure you know exactly what the program looks like before you sign up. (I’m speaking from experience on this one!)
-The amount of work I put into what I was doing determined my success. The coach was not there to do the work for me. The coach was my guide who had the knowledge, tools, and experience to ask powerful questions to get me to think about what I truly wanted and get past my own barriers. Think about a sports coach; they aren’t out there throwing the ball for the athlete. They are on the sidelines guiding, strategizing, being a cheerleader and an accountability partner.

Career coaching is an investment in both time and money. The return on that investment will be specific to you. It helped stop spinning from all the different ideas I had, narrow down what I really wanted to do, and identify that I wanted to start my own coaching business. Clients I have worked with have come to me with different goals, such as job search, career transition, leadership development, and career design. Even though their goals were different, they all benefited from drilling down and discovering what was most important to them, what they would be happiest doing, and then setting goals to achieve that.

One last piece of advice. If you know you want to make a career transition, take your career to the next level, create a focused plan and be clear about precisely what you want or get past something you think is blocking you, don’t be like me and what another year before investing in yourself. I might not be the coach for you, but if you want to learn more about my coaching framework, send me a message or book a time to speak with me through my online calendar.

Make 2021 everything you want it to be!